Which modern country is the successor of the Roman Empire?

[RINO Tom]

Spain

[RINO Tom]

My actual answer is that nobody is.  The Byzantine Empire was a clear successor to the united Roman Empire, and when it fell, that was the end of *Rome*.  Any Latin culture has a decent say (Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, etc.), any Orthodox country has a say (Greece, Russia, Serbia, etc.), the "Christian West" as a vague concept is a very good extension of what the late Romans saw themselves as, Turkey has Constantinople and could be a successor on "right of conquest," but they never converted to Christianity (which, let's not forget, was THE deciding unifying factor in what *The Roman Empire* really meant in its twilight years, both as a united empire and as the Byzantine Empire).  Several nations have claimed it throughout history, and none of them have done so "just because" - they have all cited some type of lineage.  And they're all partially right (yes, even the HRE), but in the end there is no true heir to Rome.  However, as corny as it sounds, I would say that "Christian Europe" (and its ethnic descendants around the world) are heirs to Roman civilization.

[RINO Tom]

I will say, the whole laughing at the Holy Roman Empire's claim has become a bit of a Dunning Kruger thing, where people who think they're smart for pointing out how "ridiculous" it is that they'd claim to be successors (more accurately, a "revival" of it, per their words at the time) of the late Western Roman Empire are actually the ones not smart enough to realize the nuances of the situation.

Once the Roman Empire was fully Christianized, being "Roman" was entirely a concept based on the belief of One God, One Emperor and One Empire.  "Rome" (in whatever form it took) was God's chosen empire to rule the world by His words.  Charlemagne was crowned Emperor in the city of Rome, by the Pope, with the FULL support of the city's people and he ruled over every single part of the former Roman Empire that wasn't (A) currently ruled over by the Empire's eastern half from Constantinople (i.e., Southern Italy) or (B) actively being occupied by foreign Muslim invaders (i.e., Iberia).  What does his Frankish heritage matter?  The Empire had had countless non-Italic Emperors by that point, and its living successor in the east was being ruled by Greeks, Illyrians, Armenians and others.

Did the HRE eventually lose any real connection to its original founding principles, especially once it was religiously divided, politically divided and had lost its holdings in Italy?  Sure ... but how is that different than the Eastern Roman Empire once it was reduced to Anatolia and Greece and had completely done away with even pretending to care about Latin?  All of these nitpicky things really didn't bother the people of the day (whose understanding of the concept we should care about WAY more than modern people, I might add...) than they do people in the Twenty-First Century.

For context, I am of the opinion that the Eastern Roman Empire is the obvious "successor" of "Rome" in that it quite literally never stopped being the literal eastern half of the Roman Empire, lol.  However, make no mistake - to act like a bunch of Western Europeans who'd been Christianized and were ruling over the Western half's former territories couldn't reasonably get with the Pope (let's keep in mind that the Roman Catholic Church is arguably THE sole legacy of the Roman Empire left today...) and decide to resurrect the Western Empire in some form is just SO ridiculous is to not appreciate the complexity of the era ... and I feel like it's something people do to sound smart or be funny, and both usually fail.  Lol.  The fact that many nations and peoples would look to carry on the tradition of an idea as abstract as "The (Late, Christianized) Roman Empire" should not be surprising, and it certainly shouldn't be mocked quite as much as it is.